Who am I?!

The Beginning of an Era

Ever thought a virtual turtle could change your life?

Well, it happened to me.

It all started with Logo on a 386 running at 33MHz (yes, Turbo button included).
Even when I was just a kid, unable to understand my or that turtle’s world, something settled in me, like a logic bomb.

But the real spark ignited was when an Aptiva L22 landed at home.
Imagine this; A 120 MHz Pentium, 12 MB of RAM, a 1.2 Gb hard drive.

It was summer, and my chair and I fused in perfect symbiosis.

What do I remember the most?
Honestly, feeling like an astronaut tumbling into unexplored space, tweaking system settings to the point of breaking things.
Bringing the system back to life with the “Product Recovery” CD.

From there, it was a slippery slope: tinkering with configuration files, fooling around with Telnet, playing with Back Orifice, scanning ports here and there, some naive attempts to recreate a bluebox…

Oh, and formatting friends’ PCs… for free, of course.

Education

I was decent at school, but disagreed with their “be demanding” philosophy.
Naturally, no one asked for my opinion.

That until a $200 bill for “free internet I pulled from somewhere” showed up.
Nothing like guilt to awaken responsibility, eh?

When the time came to decide my future, I chose civil engineering.
Spoiler: I discovered that “I was good at math” was an oxymoron, and the university wasn’t interested in my philosophy on demanding-ness either.

Despite sleepless nights and existential crises, I graduated in Industrial Civil Engineering with an IT diploma.

My logic back then?
Not to pigeonhole myself into pure computer science.
Ironic, to say the less, considering where I am now.

But in defense of my past-self that broad vision has been more useful than I care to admit.

Life, here and there

Enjoy the ride, they say.

Although I spent the last years at the University working in software, upon graduating my world transformed into PowerPoint presentations, sales meetings, and corporate t-shirts.

Funny to say; I didn’t feel it demmanding enough! and the siren call of code was too strong to resist.

So, I regrouped troops and went back into software.
I landed a job at a startup in Santiago, Chile, creating video games, as you can guess no more office t-shirts.
The startup later caught the eye of DeNA, leading to an interesting plot twist that transported me to the tech mecca of San Francisco.

Like any good startup story, there were ups and downs, invaluable learnings, and my first mass layoff experience. Great years, no doubt.

After that, still in the valley, as they call it, I led a team in a small gaming startup. Learning the intricacies of managing a team, dealing with technical debt while balancing a product vision with unthinkable deadlines.

Imagine an intensive leadership course in a highly dynamic environment.
But the same dynamism has two sides, after over two years, the company would close its doors.

In 2019, I returned to Chile to work on educational games at OCLPlay, a brand-new gaming company, in partnership with another giant, Osmo.
There I led a highly talented team, while discovering the satisfaction of crafting products both fun and educational.
Technical and human challenges, COVID in the middle, many hats to wear, stakeholders across continents. Another adventure of learning and fun.
And then, another round of massive layoffs.

But the expat bug had bitten me again, so I decided to leave Chile, and long story short, that’s how I ended up in sunny Barcelona, nowadays doing freelancing gigs, flirting with other stacks and roles, exploring this side of the planet.

Languages ​​and tools

Is this where we talk about the good ol’ days of J2ME?

Avoiding some saudade and to save time, it is best to say that I am comfortable with C# and Unity, I enjoy Go’s simplicity, appreciate Python’s usefulness, and I am in the process of learning every day more about JS/TS along with React/Next.js and, to spicy up things a bit, NestJS too.

Extra things that no one asked for…

In addition to software, I enjoy photography, exploring new places, riding a bike, and playing some games on chess.com.

So, if you ever find yourself in Barcelona, ​​let’s go for a coffee (or a beer) and talk about this fascinating world we live in.

I promise not to format your computer… unless you ask me to.